I Never Met the Dead Man

"I Never Met the Dead Man" is the second episode of the FOX animated series Family Guy. It is the second episode of Family Guy to be aired.

Plot summary

Lois, annoyed that Peter spends more time watching TV than with the family, suggests he teach Meg to drive. Peter grudgingly agrees, and unwittingly gives Meg bad driving tips, such as telling her to rev her engine 2 times, challenging someone to a race, which causes her to fail her road test. On their way home from DMV, Peter crashes the car into a main cable TV transmitter, knocking out reception for the whole town of Quahog. Meanwhile, Stewie devises a plan to get out of eating broccoli by building a weather-altering machine that will freeze broccoli crops.

Peter convinces Meg, to take the fall for the cable outage, bribing her with the promise of a convertible once she gets her license. When they arrive home with the transmitter, Lois is angry that he put the blame on a young teenager. While this is happening, Stewie steals the dish to amplify his signal. Meanwhile, Peter suffering withdrawal syndrome from lack of TV (even had to rely on a friend in Boston to describe a recent NYPD Blue episode for him). He continues to be delusional by having a Wizard of Oz-inspired dream, seeing ALF, Gilligan from Gilligan's Island, Robby the Robot from Lost in Space, and Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie, who turn into Samantha Stephens from Bewitched.

This leads Peter to strap a TV cutout to himself so his whole world appears to be a TV show. When Peter makes the cardboard TV set, he labels the things he sees around him after TV channels and a TV show. He sees Lifetime (two women talking over lunch), CBS (two elderly people), UPN (black people playing basketball) and 90210 (James Woods Regional High School) which depicts the general target groups that each network was aiming. When Meg can no longer deal with the public scorn, she rats out Peter as the one responsible for Quahog's loss of TV, causing the town to turn on him instead.

Lois saves Peter by giving a compelling speech to the community about how TV keeps them all from enjoying fulfilling pursuits and one another. Peter is inspired by the speech and takes it to extreme, dragging the family to one activity after another. When the family can no longer keep up with him, Peter goes off with William Shatner.

Stewie's weather machine causes a huge rainstorm (followed by lightning striking and destroying the weather machine, much to Stewie's dismay) in which Meg accidentally hits and "kills" Shatner while practicing driving. As Peter recovers at the hospital in a body cast after being run over by Meg, he is forced to watch TV, re-addicting him, much to his family's relief.

Censorship

The syndicated version of this episode edits the following scenes:

The scene where Tom and Diane say whatever they want now that Quahog isn't broadcasting the news is edited to remove Tom's line "I'm the Lord Jesus Christ," but leaves in the second half of the line, "I think I'll go get drunk and beat up some midgets".
The NYPD Blue cutaway of Sipowicz mooning a criminal to get him to talk.
The CHiPs scene is also cut.

There is a deleted scene at the point when Lois concludes her speech. One man reacts to the speech with "I'm gonna go masturbate" and his friend adds "And I'll come with you."

Cultural References

Peter's trip to South West shows an ostrich get run over, to which the coyote says to just "keep on going". This is a reference to Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner.
When Meg beats the guy in the horse carriage in street racing, the carriage and horse blows up, a reference to how all vehicles seem to explode when they crash in Hollywood movies.
When the citizens come to Peter to beat him up, Peter tries to distract them by pointing out Bigfoot, where Bigfoot responds that Peter cannot weasel his way out of his troubles.
Chris used "American Online" and found out the cable was out
The TV shows Movies parodied are Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Scooby Doo, Wizard of Oz, Bewitched, Lifetime (2 women chatting and sipping tea), CBS (two old couples walking together), UPN (african-americans playing basketball), 90210 (the high school in Family Guy, James Wood High) and two Scoops of Raisins, which is a reference to the raisin cereal, Raisin Bran.
This episode marks the first of many Star Trek references that would soon occur throughout the run of the show. Seth MacFarlane is an avid Trekkie, and has guest starred on two episodes of Enterprise. [1]
The German bratwurst seller that invades first the Polish stand, and after that the Czech stand at the festival, is a reference to World War II. The sausages get smaller and smaller
This is the second of four episodes in a row of the first season with something associated with death as part of the title. The titles of both this and the previous episode ("Death Has a Shadow") were originally used for episodes of the classic radio program Suspense.
During the scene in the classroom, the voice-over for Meg is a reference to The Wonder Years.
In a cutaway, it shows the popular band Hanson get out of their tour bus.
The Scooby Doo Series is named as "The Scooby Doo Murder Files". At The end, Fred points out that they're dealing with "one sick son of a bitch"

References

Callaghan, Steve. “I Never Met the Dead Man.” Family Guy: The Official Episode Guide Seasons 1–3. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. 18–21.
Delarte, Alonso. “Nitpicking Family Guy: Season 1.” Bob’s Poetry Magazine March 2005: 8–9. http://bobspoetry.com/Bobs02Mr.pdf

External links